Mendeley (version 1.15.2)

Mendeley is a citation management program that, like Papers and similar programs, is challenging more established citation management programs, such as EndNote and RefWorks, as well as the traditional pen-and-paper method. It has several exciting features as well as some drawbacks. Overall, it is a well-supported and used program that should provide an alternative to students who do not want to use more traditional programs.

Mendeley was founded by 3 German graduate students in 2007 and purchased by Elsevier in 2013. Mendeley is freely available, and a premium version can be purchased via either individual or institutional subscriptions. The program is available on multiple platforms, including desktop and mobile devices. The free version is fully functional and offers 2 gigabytes (GB) of personal library space along with 100 megabytes (MB) of shared library space. The free version allows 1 private group of up to 3 people. The premium version offers an increase of personal library space to 5 GB and 20 GB of shared library space, plus unlimited private groups of up to 25 people. In addition, the premium version provides the Mendeley Suggest tool and increased training and customer service support. The institutional upgrade provides an analytics dashboard for the library, along with link resolver integration to facilitate access to articles from library subscriptions.

USE OF MENDELEY

After downloading Mendeley, you need to create an account, which requires only an email address and can be done from any device with an Internet connection. Accounts include 2 GB of online storage for portable document format (PDF) files, citations, and other metadata. Creating an account will also create a Mendeley profile. Once created, there are 3 ways to access a Mendeley account: a desktop application available for the Mac, Windows, and Linux platforms; a web-based version accessible from most browsers; and mobile apps for iOS and Android. Thanks to the 2 GB of cloud-based storage, all saved documents, metadata, PDF annotations, and organizational structures such as folders are saved and synced across multiple platforms.

A Mendeley profile is also similar to a social media presence, much like the researcher profile available on Google Scholar. Users can customize a profile with a picture, import their scholarly publications from Scopus, and add publications to their personal libraries. You can also add research interests, educational background, and work history. By borrowing elements from Google Scholar and LinkedIn, Mendeley has created a research-based social network, where users can follow and be followed by other users based on mutual research interests. You can determine what information to share, based on predetermined privacy levels that can be adjusted in the settings section of the profile.

FEATURES

Mendeley offers a variety of features to assist users with locating, managing, and using their citations.

Importing

Mendeley offers a variety of ways to import citations and documents. You can import articles from databases like PubMed, Web of Science, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and Google Scholar with ease in formats such as RIS, XML, or BibTex. Similarly, you can import information from other citation management programs such as EndNote, RefWorks, and Zotero using the RIS format. You can drag and drop PDFs into Mendeley to import. Mendeley will search a PDF for embedded metadata, but note that metadata is usually only embedded in publisher-created PDFs, not those created through scanning. You can also import documents via a web browser using the bookmark provided on the Mendeley website. Lastly, you can use the Watched Folders feature to specify folders on your hard drive, from which Mendeley will automatically import any saved PDFs.

Mendeley Suggest

The paid version of Mendeley will suggest citations from the Mendeley database, based on what you have in your library. Mendeley Suggest does not make recommendations based on a single article in your library; rather, it uses the overall content of your library to suggest citations that you might be interested in. You can easily accept these suggestions into your database with the click of a button.

Groups

Groups provide a way to share a collection of citations with multiple people within the Mendeley platform and store those citations online. Group members can add, edit, and use citations in the group collection. You can also follow groups or organizations online and see what citations they share with the public. These public groups allow people to like, share, and comment on documents.

Organization

You can organize your citations in folders and create sub-folders inside of main folders. Mendeley includes two default folders, “recently read” and “recently added.” The “recently added” folder helps you easily find your newly imported citations.

Altmetrics

Mendeley indicates the number of users who have saved a given article into their collections. This feature allows you to see how popular an article is based on the number of other Mendeley users who also store that particular citation. This information is included in metrics provided by Altmetric [2].

Annotation

You can easily annotate articles in the browser, desktop, or mobile version, including adding sticky notes or highlighting. These notes are attached to the instance of the citation in Mendeley, and they are easily viewable from the program and synced across platforms.

Citations in documents

Mendeley offers a Microsoft Word plug-in that allows you to cite items from Mendeley in Word documents using a plethora of citation styles. You can also create new citations styles or modify existing ones and import them into the plug-in.

CONCERNS AND ISSUES

On the surface, Mendeley is a wonderful program with a low learning curve and a wide array of features at zero cost. Librarians and other power users, however, may recognize some limitations and/or confusing aspects, especially in the free version. Users may be confused by the limited scope of the search feature. This feature searches only articles in the Mendeley database; it does not search materials in other article repositories such as PubMed, Web of Science, or CINAHL. Users may not realize that limitation and, therefore, miss important citations that they might need for their research. Also, because it is so easy to set up an account and add materials to Mendeley, the quality of the citations and papers shared in Mendeley can vary. Users can easily upload low-quality papers, which could then be found and used by others. Finally, some features that are important to librarians, such as link resolver integration and the analytics dashboard, are only available in the institutional version.

CONCLUSION

Mendeley is a robust citation management program with a relatively low learning curve and excellent online support, and is especially valuable for users who want to share their citations with others and use social media–like features. With these social networking features, it occupies a somewhat unique niche in the citation management world. As Mendeley grows in popularity, libraries should have staff available who are able to answer questions about the product.